


Imperfectly

by Zooey_Glass



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, Post-Series, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-28
Updated: 2008-09-28
Packaged: 2017-10-02 01:15:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zooey_Glass/pseuds/Zooey_Glass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><cite>We get a little further from perfection each year on the road.</cite></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Ani DiFranco song of the same name.
> 
> Thank you to the lovely Parenthetical for superlative betaing.
> 
> The library Sam and Dean visit is modelled on [Harrison County Public Library](http://www.hcpl.lib.in.us/). I owe a debt of thanks to the real librarians there, who were kind enough to respond to my queries about the area in great detail, and were extremely helpful.

They don't show up at the Roadhouse too often these days. There aren't many people around who knew them back in the old days - demon hunters aren't a long-lived crew - but Ellen and Jo know them pretty damn well, and most times that's just weird. Jo's hooked up with someone now - well, she hooked up with several someones, but the one she's got at the moment seems like he's fixing to stay - and has a couple of kids. She's still working the bar more often than not, though, and that 'guy she never fucked' itch still wants scratching when it comes to Dean. That, coupled with the fact that she and Ellen both know all about Sam and Dean and their family, means they tend not to go there too often. After everything that happened with the Demon, it's hard to keep a low profile on the hunting circuit, but it's been long enough and the story is fantastical enough that the Winchester boys have part-faded into legend. Fact has blended with rumour until the truth's so uncertain they can mostly blur it where it suits them. Not with Ellen, though, who never was the kind of lady who'd stand for any blurring, even on the things that didn't really matter.

They have enough of an understanding with the Roadhouse folks, though, that when they find themselves bloody and bruised after an encounter with a kurrag just 50 miles down the road from the saloon, they don't hesitate for more than a moment before heading there. Turning up the road to the saloon, Dean realises it's been more than a year since they last came this way. He tells himself that's not so long, but he knows they've both been more than usually slow to suggest showing their faces.

The sun's just coming up by the time they've driven over there. The bar door's standing propped open, but when Dean strides in no one's there. Sam slinks in after him, and Dean can see him flinching in anticipation of a greeting, then looking relieved when he sees the room is empty. Dean almost flinches himself at the sight, but he can't let Sammy see that on his face.

'Whisky breakfast, Sammy boy?' he says instead, voice coming out just this side of too loud and cheerful.

Sam doesn't seem to notice, though: he just rolls his eyes and says, 'I'll stick with orange juice, I think. And don't go messing about behind the bar; you know Ellen will have your head if you do.'

'Truer words were never spoken,' Ellen's voice rings out from behind them, and they turn to see her in the doorway, mail in one hand and a bucket of something unidentifiable in the other.

'Bart's dropping by this afternoon,' she says when Dean raises one eyebrow at the bucket. 'Needs some cow guts for bait.' Then she catches sight of Sam's face as he turns reflexively to pay better attention to the conversation, and her voice changes. 'Oh, Sam,' she says sadly, and Dean sees Sam flinch again at the pity in her voice. The silence stretches out for a moment, and then Ellen's her usual brisk self again, asking what happened the way she's always demanded reports on their news. Sam's voice is calm and matter-of-fact as he explains their fight with the snaketail. 'At least it missed my eye,' he says as he always does, and Dean knows that he'll be OK with Ellen now. It's only the first moments of a meeting which worry Sam, the part where he has to watch people's shock and sympathy and wonder whether they're going to make a big deal out of it. Then he slips back into being as relaxed and easy as he's always been.

Dean wishes he could do the same.

That's the real reason they've stayed away from the Roadhouse so long this time - because it's easier to be around people who didn't know Sam at all, before. People like Ellen are especially hard: she knew their dad, and Dean feels like any second now she's going to ask him one of the millions of questions he can't answer, accuse him of failing John, or of being like him.

In truth, there's barely any chance of Ellen doing any of those things: she knew John Winchester, good and bad, and doesn't expect his boys to be any more or less imperfect than he was. Dean still hears his dad's voice, though, when they're around his friends, and it doesn't help him feel any less guilty about what's happened with Sammy.

Oh well.

'Ash around, Ellen?' he asks.

'In back,' she says, and continues her conversation with Sam.

Dean heads out beyond the bar, into the poky corridor that leads into the living quarters.

'He won't thank you for waking him up,' Sam calls after him.

Dean flips him the bird and keeps heading for Ash's room. It's true that it's a bit early to be banging on his door - Ash probably only went to bed a couple of hours ago - but Dean's not planning on winning any prizes for Mr. Social Graces 2012. He does knock on Ash's door, though, rather than hammering the way he usually does. To his surprise, the door pops open straight away and Ash peers warily out, half-obscured by a wave of dope smoke. Less surprisingly, he's naked from the waist up, but - Dean notes with relief - he is wearing pants.

'Dean, my man! Long time no see! C'mon in and join the party!'

Ash never seems to change, no matter how long they leave it between visits. He has the same ratty mullet and the same young-old face set on top of his scrawny roadie body. Dean finds him soothing: even though his scarily souped-up brain leaves even geek-boy Sam's in the dust, he sticks to the same restful routine of drinking and sleeping and listening to the greatest hits of seventies rock. His mind might be jumping around like a grasshopper on steroids, but he's always happy to apply it to whatever they're currently researching and he never asks questions Dean doesn't want to answer.

'Hey, dude, good to see you! I was thinking of you a couple of months back - we were fighting this peyotl demon out in Mexico and I swear it had your hairstyle.'

'A demon with taste, man, who knew?' Ash casts a nervous eye up the corridor for any sign that Ellen's about to swoop down and ask him to do some work, before opening the door wide enough to let Dean in.

Dean shakes his head at the memory. 'Shit, I tell you, that was a crazy few days. Beats me why people take acid, I can tell you that much.' He follows Ash into the room and accepts his offer of a spliff. Normally he wouldn't indulge - weed's too risky, slows him down too much - but this is a safe place as places go, and they can hang here for a day or so. Anyway, it's pretty much a moot point, given that you could probably get stoned just by breathing in here. He kicks back and stares up at the mandala painted on Ash's ceiling. He hasn't slept for months, not properly, but lulled by the dope and the strains of 'Hell or Heaven' drifting up from Ash's tinny little speakers he feels himself drifting off. Sam'll hang with Ellen for a few hours; they can come looking if they need him.

'Hell or Heaven' finishes and the record moves on to the slightly less soothing notes of 'Mad Hatter', but Dean's out for the count.

* * *

Someone hammers on the door and Dean wakes up with a start. Ash is gone, and since he never opens his blackout blinds Dean can't get any clue to the time from the sun. He sits up and feels his head spin a bit - he can't have been out that long if he's still in the drifty part of stoned rather than the twitchy not-headache he usually has the morning after. He stumbles to the door and opens it. Sam pushes in at the same moment and Dean stumbles and almost falls on his ass. He sits back down on the bed instead.

'Clumsy, dude, losing your edge,' Sam laughs, then stops when Dean blinks and ducks his head away. 'Sorry, man, were you sleeping? I wish I'd known, I would've left you be.'

Sam hasn't missed the fact that Dean hasn't been getting a lot of shut-eye, however hard Dean's tried to hide it. They've both been pretty twitchy since Sam's... accident, and Dean's been doing all the driving. Sam rests his hand on the back of Dean's neck, warm against his skin, and Dean leans into the touch for a second before pulling away.

'Nah, time I woke up anyway, I'm starved. Haven't you ladies had time to cook me up some delicious feast?'

Sam swats at Dean lightly with the back of his hand, but laughs good-humouredly.

'That's what I was coming to tell you: Ellen's making pancakes. She says we better get out there quick before the kids come and eat the lot.'

They head out through the bar and back towards Ellen's kitchen, Dean blinking in the bright mid-morning light. When they get there Jo's two boys are already seated, staring intently at the maple syrup and chocolate chips set in the middle of the table. Dean's guiltily reminded of how long it's been since they last stopped by here when he realises that the chubby toddler in the highchair is Harvey, the tiny baby they saw on their last visit.

Eyes on the food, Sam makes hastily for the empty seats across from the kids, but Dean's arrested for a moment by the way the light falls across the kitchen, casting the table and the kids in a rosy glow like something out of a magazine.

'Jordy, you remember Sam and Dean, don't you?' Ellen says, turning from the stove with a platter of pancakes stacked high as her chin. She catches the whiff of weed coming from Dean as she passes and gives him a disapproving look, but doesn't comment.

'Yes,' says the older boy, eyes still on the chocolate chips.

'"Yes" what?' Ellen demands, setting the platter down next to Sam, just out of the little boy's reach.

'Yes, ma'am,' Jordy replies meekly, turning to face his grandmother.

Sensing that everyone's attention is elsewhere, the baby, Harvey, makes a spirited attempt to reach the maple syrup. Dean notices just in time that the kid's managed to wriggle out of the straps of his highchair and leans forward to catch him.

'Thanks, Dean,' Ellen says. 'He's a terror for doing that, it's his latest trick.'

Dean bends to tighten the straps back up. 'No problem. I remember Sammy was just the same at that age. Jeez, we had an awful time keeping him in the car seat. Dad used to post me next to him with orders to keep tying him up as fast as he could get out. I remember he did it fifteen times on the road between Topeka and Kansas City - damn, but that was a long journey.'

Sam rolls his eyes as he always does when Dean talks about when they were kids. 'Yeah, yeah, I was the craziest toddler in fifty states. Don't get him started, Ellen, or he'll be showing you the baby photos next.'

'Dude, no one wants to see that ugly a baby,' Dean shoots back, struggling with the buckles, which seem a lot more complicated than the ones they used to have on Sam's old highchair. He's still fiddling with them when Jo sweeps in through the back door and sits herself down.

'Hi, guys,' she says. Her eyes linger on Sam's scar for a moment, but she doesn't look too shocked or ask any questions, so Dean figures Ellen's already filled her in.

He finishes buckling Harvey back into the chair and looks around for a seat. He's not too pleased to realise that Jo's taken the chair to Sammy's left, the position Dean always takes these days. He has the choice of sitting down next to Jo, or squishing in between the two kids. Tempting as this second option is, he figures he'll leave Ellen the grandmotherly delights of chopping up bits of pancake and being smeared with maple syrup.

Sam's eyeing the pancakes with almost as much intensity as the kids, but he and Dean both know better than to reach for anything on the table before Ellen's said grace. Dean doesn't quite get Ellen's insistence on observing the religious proprieties, because in his opinion anyone who's seen all the decidedly non-angelic things that are out there can have no illusions about the idea there's any divine power looking out for people. It's one thing to use holy water and the _invocatio_ and all the rest, but it's strictly business as far as Dean's concerned. Still, he guesses it's all part and parcel of the way Ellen runs a tight ship, akin to the Marine routines Dad used to make them run through when they were kids. Dean figures maybe all families have their own rituals - it doesn't much matter what they are, as long as you stick close to your own.

Finally grace is done and Ellen dishes out the pancakes. They're really good, and for a while there's mostly silence while they all apply themselves to the meal - or as much silence as is possible when you have a two-year-old and a five-year-old at the table. Ellen's kept pretty busy feeding the kids; Dean keeps an eye out too, and from time to time he reaches out to stop Harvey toppling his milk or plunging a chubby hand into the chocolate chips. The kid really does remind him of Sam at the same age: same single-minded determination to get into everything and taste whatever he can get his hands on.

Eventually Jo finishes up her pancakes and clears her throat. 'So, it's been a while since we've seen you guys. You staying long?'

Dean's eyes meet Sam's for a second before he says, 'Maybe a week. We've been up by Kenton the past couple of weeks, tracking a kurrag, and we're both pretty beat. I'd like to spend a bit of time on the car, too - been neglecting my girl.'

Sam swallows a big bite of pancake and says, 'Is that OK with you, ladies? We can easily find a motel if you've got a full house.'

Syrup drips down his chin, and Dean reflects that he's not that far different from his days of busting out of highchairs. In some ways, anyhow.

'Of course,' Jo says. 'Stay as long as you like. You can give Jordy here a bit of training in target practice, if you want to earn your keep.'

Dean sees Sam wince. He notices Ellen doesn't look all that happy either - she never was that keen on Jo getting involved in hunting, and he figures that she's not really on board with training the kids so young. Still, they're Jo's kids, so it's her decision, and the way Dean sees it it's better to start early. He's beyond thinking you can pick and choose whether you join the fight or not, so you might as well know how to defend yourself.

He still remembers the first time he fired a gun at something. He was six years old; they were staying with Pastor Jim while Dad was off on a hunt. Jim was out somewhere on the grounds with Sammy, leaving Dean alone in the house, and Dean was seized with the desire to explore. He'd been in the weapons store plenty of times before, but he'd never actually had the chance to have a really good look at Pastor Jim's arsenal. So - he sneaked down there and poked through everything he could find. Most of the weapons were locked away, but Pastor Jim had left a pistol out on the table with the cleaning stuff and a couple of cartridges. Dean was pretty fascinated - Dad had shown him how to clean and load a gun, but he never left weapons out where Dean or Sam could get hold of them - and he went through the whole routine as best he could remember. He'd just gotten the thing loaded up and was dreamily practising sighting down the barrel, the way he'd seen Dad do, when he heard a noise and glimpsed a movement at the window. He jumped about a mile out of his skin and fired the pistol in the general direction of the window before he even had time to think. The window broke, and the recoil hit him so hard that he was left too stunned to move, never mind fire again. Just as well that the movement at the window turned out to be Dad, back from his hunting trip early, and not some kind of creature hell-bent on killing them all.

Dad had whupped his ass for touching things without permission, then ruffled his hair and said, 'You did good, for your first time. We'll have to see about getting you some training'.

So yeah, Sammy can have the moral scruples about making kids into warriors. Dean will go with the target practice, thanks all the same. It's saved both their asses plenty of times.

_Not enough times, though_, he thinks in the back of his mind. He squashes it down and helps himself to another pancake.

'Sleep first,' he says. 'Two hours passed out on Ash's bed doesn't do it for me these days.'

* * *

Dean and Sam bunk down in the room they usually use at the Roadhouse. It's pretty basic - bare walls and skinny single beds so short that Sam's legs hang half off the end. Still, the fight of the previous day - and the months of not sleeping - has left them both exhausted. With the noonday sun blazing down outside and bellies full of pancakes, it's easy to fall asleep.

Dean wakes up about mid-afternoon, the shadows lengthening across the room. Sam's still asleep, snoring slightly, and Dean considers waking him so that he won't be too antsy when night falls. Then he reflects that Sam's probably tired enough to sleep right through to the next morning, and even if he's not, sleep is too difficult for them to come by these days to interrupt it for no real reason. So Dean scoops up his clothes and tiptoes out to the hall, figuring he can dress in the bathroom after he's taken a much-needed shower. He pauses next to Sammy's bed on the way out, watching his brother sleep. Sam's curled on his side, trying to keep as much of himself on the bed as possible, and the hurt side of his face is turned in, towards the pillow. When he's lying like this, undamaged cheek bathed in the late-afternoon sun, it's easy to imagine that he's unscathed. Dean can't let himself forget the truth, though, and his hand hovers for a moment over Sam's hair before he turns regretfully towards the door.

After his shower, Dean heads outside to the Impala. There's no one in sight, although he can hear Harvey and Jordy playing somewhere off beyond the house and knows that Ellen or Jo will be with them. It doesn't matter - Dean's in the mood for some time to himself and they won't mind him helping himself to a few supplies. Plenty of hunters take the opportunity to tune up their rides when they stop by the Roadhouse, so Ellen keeps a set of tools and a few cans of oil and the like out in the barn. So long as people restock what they use, they can take whatever they need.

The Impala's sitting out back, dusty and somewhat neglected-looking after the week they've spent tracking. Dean fetches a bucket of water and spends a happy hour washing her over, checking the paintwork for scratches or dents as he does so. Once the grime of the road is off, he starts a second, more thorough check, looking for anything loose or not quite as it should be. The routine feels good, soothing. The Impala's still in good shape despite all the years she's been on the road, battered and abused by the hundreds of times she's kept them safe from one evil thing or another. Sam once started a bullshit discussion about how the car was like the embodiment of some philosophical debate about identity, because what with the devastation wreaked by the Demon and a few other near-misses they've had over the years, there's not much left of the parts which made up the car originally. Dean's not interested in the philosophical whys and hows of it, he just knows that the Impala's his car, about the only thing he has that's his, and that'll be true even if he replaces every last bolt of her. Hell, he's been through at least two lives himself; might as well ask whether he's still the same person.

He's just opened up the hood and lifted the dipstick when he senses someone behind him and hears the unmistakable sound of his brother clearing his throat. He ignores it, and Sam watches him in silence for a bit before clearing his throat again. 'Want any help?'

Uh-oh. Sam knows that Dean hates anyone else working on the Impala as well as he knows that demons hate the name of God. It's never a good sign when he offers to help with the car.

'What's wrong, Sam?' Dean says, keeping his eyes focused on the oil - about time for some fresh - and his voice casual and even.

'We're sticking around here now? What's that all about?'

Dean twists round to see his brother, confused. 'Dude, I thought you agreed. We're both worn out, we need a rest, and here we can eat real food and chew the fat and spend a bit of time with some _friends_.'

'Dean, that's what I've been saying for years, and you've bitched about staying with anyone for more than a couple of nights. Now here you are promising Jo's kid fucking shooting lessons? What am I supposed to do, bake cookies and talk make-up with the girls?'

'Dude, try talking make-up with Jo and you'll be talking in falsetto for a week.' Dean chuckles, but he can see there's more to this conversation than he's really got a handle on, and he knows Sam's not going to be swayed by a joke. He still has no clue what he can say to his brother, though, so he turns away and studies the dipstick as if it's on the verge of revealing the deep secrets of the universe. He's still trying to think of something which will keep his brother happy, at least for now, when Jordy comes pelting around the corner of the barn and runs smack bang into Sam.

'Dean, Dean, Momma says can we have the lessons now? I got my gun right here, can we can we?'

He's waving a BB gun around his head like something out of a spaghetti Western.

Dean sees several emotions pass over his brother's face in quick succession - annoyance at the interruption, anger at the thought of Jordy careening about like this with a firearm, and then a sort of resigned patience. Sam reaches down and catches Jordy's wrist, neatly scooping the gun into his own hand. He hunkers down next to the little boy and looks him seriously in the eye.

'First lesson, man, you take care with your weapon. Don't wave it around so's it could go off accidentally, hit you or something you didn't want to hit.'

Jordy looks abashed, eyes on his battered sneaker twisting a hole in the dusty ground.

Sam straightens up and looks at Dean. 'Jesus, I'm surprised at Jo - I thought weapon safety would've been the first thing she'd have taught them. Fu- really irresponsible, letting him run around with this.'

Jordy fires up at this. 'She did teach me! She made me tell her all the rules before she bought me a gun of my own.'

His indignation is comical, eyes flashing at the notion of anyone criticising his mother, and Dean feels himself soften towards the kid. He knows Sam is right - Dad would have whupped their asses so bad if he'd seen them behaving like that - but he's touched by the little boy's loyalty to his mother.

'OK then,' he says. 'Tell us the rules.'

Jordy's shoulders straighten, his hands going behind his back. Dean recognises the posture from his own childhood attempts to prove himself to Dad, and suppresses a smile.

'Don't point the gun anywhere you don't want to h-hit; don't touch the trigger until you're ready to shoot; don't load the gun until you want to use it.'

'Well done,' says Sam, and smiles at the little boy. It's a full-on sunshiny Sammy smile, and even made crooked by the scar it's lost none of its power on other people. Jordy beams with pride at the words of praise, then his face clouds momentarily.

'Momma'll be mad if she knows I forgot... you won't tell, will you?' he appeals to them both. Dean sees Sam's eyebrow quirk just a little and knows he's half-tempted to make the kid sweat.

'Of course not; it won't happen again, will it?' he says smoothly. Sam _always_ thinks it's funny to keep you guessing, but Jordy's only five, for chrissakes. Besides, Dean's been on the receiving end enough times to know how annoying it is. His thoughts wander, then he's recalled to reality with a start when Sam puts the airgun in his hand.

'So, big brother, it seems you have a lesson to teach. I'll go and paint my nails, shall I?'

Sam smirks and saunters off, jeans hanging loose around his hips, and it's brought home to Dean once again how obscenely skinny he still is. At least his mood seems to have abruptly shifted away from the argument that had been brewing a few minutes before, though. Since half the argument had been _about_ the shooting lessons, there's no way that Jordy's interruption should have produced this effect, but Dean's not about to complain.

He turns back to Jordy. 'So, kiddo, where're we gonna do our target practice?'

* * *

Two hours later, Dean's exhausted from the strain of keeping his full attention on Jordy. It's been a long time since he's really spent any time with a little kid, and he'd forgotten the sheer effort it takes to keep your eye on them the whole time, make sure they're not about to shoot a squirrel or wander off onto the road or any of the million potentially lethal things that the average five-year-old can find to do. They've run through the basics over and over - first all the safety pointers, then the mechanics of loading and unloading, cleaning the gun, checking the safety catch. Jordy's been pretty well drilled in all of this by Jo, but if there's one thing Dean learned from his father it's that it never pays to skip anything when you're dealing with a weapon. Besides, Jordy's little performance at the start of their session showed that a bit of reinforcement is probably in order. They're not using a real gun - although Jordy's air pistol looks mighty like the real thing - but these things are plenty dangerous and good habits start young.

After a while Jordy starts to get bored with being drilled on safety.

'I thought you were gonna teach me how to shoot,' he whines. Dean can't really blame him - he remembers being just as frustrated with the endless drills when he was a kid.

'Sure, dude, I am. But - I know all the safety stuff seems boring - but you've gotta really know your gun. It's gotta be part of you, otherwise when the time comes to really use it it won't be ready, or you'll be too slow, or you won't shoot straight. If you don't know your weapon, that's when things go wrong.'

He's not really talking to Jordy any more, and dear god is he punished for it, because the next words out of the kid's mouth are 'Is that how Sam hurt his face?'

Dean winces, because Jordy's just a little bit too close for comfort, and with the preternatural sensitivity of the very young Jordy realises he's said the wrong thing.

'Sorry, Dean, Gramma said not to ask people about things like that.' He looks up at Dean, eyes wide and worried, obviously wondering if Dean will get mad and shout or call the lesson off altogether.

It's not Jordy's fault, though: poor kid's bound to wonder, since the last time he saw Sam and Dean they were both whole and healthy. Dean pulls himself together.

'Not exactly, Jordy, but it's true that if I'd been quicker on the draw, he might've been OK.'

He takes a deep breath.

'Anyway, kiddo, we're hunters, these things happen. Let's see how your aim is with that thing, shall we?'

Jordy nods enthusiastically, practically speechless with excitement. A fact not unappreciated by Dean, whose head's beginning to ache with the kid's endless chatter and questions.

They're shooting at cardboard targets pinned onto the side of the barn. Dean used to practise on tin cans, but since he's just spent half an hour impressing on Jordy that he should never shoot at anything metal with his airgun, he has no intention of clouding the issue.

Jordy assumes a good stance - posing for effect, but still pretty tight for a five-year-old - and sights carefully down the barrel of the gun. He flips the safety off, aims and pull the trigger.

The shot goes miles wide of the mark.

Jordy looks up at Dean with puzzled eyes. 'It didn't work!'

'It didn't work for me either, first few times I tried it. It's the kickback - the gun moves when you shoot it, so you have to be ready for that and keep it steady.'

The truth is, there's barely any kickback on these little air pistols - certainly nothing like on the big old pistol that Dean learnt on - but it's enough to knock out the hand of a not especially steady pre-schooler. Ten shots later, and Jordy's still nowhere near hitting the target.

'It's stupid, the gun's no good!' He looks about ready to cry, and Dean balks at the thought.

'C'mon, dude,' he says. 'It's not the gun - you've just gotta get your eye in. Let's have one more try together.'

He kneels in the dust and clasps his hands around Jordy's on the gun. He remembers doing this with Sam back when they were little kids - guns were never Sam's favourite weapon, even back then.

'Ready?' Dean says, sighting at the target. 'On my count - one, two, three.' He squeezes the trigger with Jordy, keeping the gun steady, and is rewarded by the sight of a hole blossoming almost at the centre of the target.

'I did it!' Jordy runs to grab the target card, bringing it back to show Dean how close to the bull's-eye the shot is.

'You sure did, well done.' Dean knows Dad would never have stood for the kind of trick he's just played, but it's worth it to see that look of achievement on Jordy's face.

'You've still gotta practise a lot,' he cautions. 'When I was learning, I sometimes went weeks without managing to hit anything. But once you've done it once, you know you can do it. You've just got to keep on practising until you can hit the mark every time. But that's enough for today.'

Dean straightens and turns towards the house, belatedly remembering that he hasn't eaten since their pancake breakfast. He starts when he sees Sam leaning against a fencepost, watching him and Jordy. He flushes slightly, hoping that his brother didn't hear any of his cheesy little pep talk. Still, could've been worse - he could've had the kid reciting the Rifleman's Creed or something.

'Dinner's ready,' Sam says without expression, and turns and walks back to the house without waiting for Dean and Jordy.

* * *

By the time they've walked back to the house and washed up, Jo and Ellen are dishing out the food. Sam's been left holding the baby, corralled into one corner of the tiny kitchen. He looks vaguely shell-shocked - unlike Dean, he has limited experience with small children - but surprisingly pleased to have a two-year-old slobbering over him. Harvey clambers up and down Sam's long body, and resists vocally when Jo comes to strap him into his highchair. Sam looks as though he'd like to protest as well, but both Ellen and Jo have made their opinions clear about spoiling kids and it would take a more foolhardy man than Sam to go up against them.

Jordy dominates the conversation all through dinner, chattering about how he knows all about guns - 'Dean showed me everything' - and his successful shot - 'it was nearly a bull's-eye'. Jo's eyes meet Dean's across the table, revealing amused complicity. It would be a pretty fine meal, except that by the end of it Sam's slipped back into his bad temper, for no reason that Dean can see. After the meal, they both help with the clearing up while Jo takes the kids off to bed - Jordy insisting on kissing both of them and reciting the gun safety rules to Dean one last time. Sam brightens up briefly at this, but as soon as the boys have gone he descends back into gloom. He slips back off to his room as soon as the last plate is wiped, complaining of being tired. God knows there's reason enough for that to be true, but Dean can always smell bullshit where Sam's concerned, and he knows it's not exhaustion that's keeping Sam out of the bar. He considers following his brother to their room, but he knows Ellen will find it weird if both of them disappear this early, so he heads to the bar instead and plays a few rounds of pool. There are no other hunters passing through at the moment, for which Dean is thankful, and he ends up having a few beers with some local guys.

By the time Dean heads for bed, he's worn out and mildly drunk, just enough that he thinks he'll sleep long and deeply. He fumbles into the dark room as quietly as he can, sneaking past Sam's bed and shucking off jeans and boots on the floor. Sam's breathing is soft and low: he might have been making excuses when he said he was too tired for socialising, but that doesn't mean he couldn't use the sleep. Dean stashes his knife under his pillow, then he's out for the count.

He wakes to the sound of Sam crying out, and then the feel of hands clutching at his arm.

'Jeez, Dean, they were strung up, it's something really bad.' Sam's barely coherent and Dean knows right away that he's had a vision. They're not the crushing events they used to be: since they finished the Demon Sam's gifts have focused and reduced in intensity. They don't seem confined to events that affect them anymore either - they just point the way to the especially evil stuff. That's more than bad enough as far as Dean is concerned, because the last thing Sam needs at the moment is to be pulled out of sleep by home movies of whichever fucker has decided to make a play for evil overlord of the month.

He shifts over in the bed and pulls his brother in close, stroking a soothing hand in his hair. Sam squeezes his huge frame onto the narrow bed and stills, breath easing, hands released from their frantic motion.

'Young girls, Dean. Strung up in the trees, their bellies cut open. And there's something else too, something I can't quite figure out, except that it's pretty rank evil. Pretty powerful, too.'

'Where?' Even as his hands are busy soothing Sam, rubbing the back of his neck and bringing him back down into reality, Dean's readying himself to leap into action, cataloguing what ammo they've got left in the trunk, assessing whether the beers he's had are too much to let him drive.

'Indiana, out near Corydon. Forest country.'

Sam's voice is still slurred from sleep and the confusion of the vision, but he's accustomed to recounting his visions by now and they can both home in on the essential details without any trouble.

'It's started already, I think, but we've got a little while before the main course. We can wait till tomorrow; if we set out early it's a day's drive.'

Dean relaxes a little. He's pretty sure he's _not_ fit to drive, and he's not as gung-ho about hunts as he used to be. His first instinct is still to get on the road straight away, get to whatever evil's going down as quickly as possible, but if there's time to wait he knows they'll both be better for it. Part of him still resents the vision for pulling Sam out of sleep when both of them need it so much, so Sam's assurance that a few hours here or there won't matter is a relief. He lies still, thinking through what they'll need to do tomorrow - rise at six, eat, pick up extra cartridges for the Beretta and some more rock salt. He'd intended to make some more silver bullets while they were here - they're almost out after fighting that goddamned kurrag. He wonders if Jo has any she'll let them have.

Sam's breathing has slowed again, his fist uncurled against Dean's chest. Dean should be relieved that he's fallen asleep again so easily - and he is, except for the fact that he knows it's partly because of how draining the vision was. The bed they're in is tiny, barely big enough for one, and even with Sam draped almost on top of him Dean's still twisted up uncomfortably on his side, hip pressed into the wall. It would be the worst kind of luck if Jo or Ellen found them like this, anyway, so he twists further onto his side, trying to ease out from under Sam so he can go sleep in the other bed. As soon as he moves, though, Sam mumbles under his breath and tangles his fingers into Dean's shirt.

'C'mon, man, let me out,' Dean whispers, but he stills anyway.

'Want you here,' Sam slurs, wrapping himself closer around Dean.

The bed's still too small, and they'll still be in all kinds of shit if anyone walks in on them, but Dean can't bring himself to move now.

'Give me some room then, dumbass. How's a man supposed to sleep with goddamn Gigantor crushing the life out of him?'

Sam sighs, but they both shift and turn until they're lying on their sides, Sam spooned up along Dean's back. It's been a long time since they slept like this, and despite all the reasons it's a bad idea Dean feels better than he has for days. With Sam's breath ghosting along the back of his neck, he falls swiftly into sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

They're on the road by eight the next morning. Dean drives, the Impala running smooth under his hands, and he feels thankful that he at least had time to work over the car before they had to be moving again. Sam sleeps, head lolling and face squashed up against the window. The position tips his scarred cheek up full into the light, and Dean realises that since the wound healed Sam's been careful to sleep the other way whenever possible. He can't do it in the car, though; as long as Dean's driving he can see the ugly gash along the side of his brother's face, twisting his cheek out of shape. Dean never looks at it when Sam can see him, but at times like this he keeps his eyes on it as much as he can, reminding himself.

Dean's stiff from lying in the same position all night, but apart from that he feels pretty fresh. He wants to let Sam sleep, so even when his stomach starts to growl a little he doesn't stop for a break, just keeps driving. After about four hours, Sam finally wakes, jerking out of sleep and staring around wildly for a second until he registers where he is.

'Morning, sleeping beauty, ready for lunch?' They're just passing through a little town, and Dean slows down to find a diner.

Sam stretches as far as he can in the confines of the car, arching his back and extending his arms back behind the seat. The motion pulls his shirt up, exposing a tiny sliver of skin above his waistband.

'Sure thing, man, I could eat a whale.'

Dean rolls his eyes. 'When can you not?' However else the years have changed them, Sam still manages to eat like he's trying to fill up a bottomless pit and yet never puts on so much as an extra ounce. The time he's spent tired and sick these past months has left him skinnier than usual, so it's a relief to see him with a real appetite again, even if it's somewhat mindblowing, watching him shovel his food away. Dean's no picky eater himself, but Sam eats like there's a competition at stake. Not that either one of them is ever likely to shift from their all-you-can-eat metabolism to middle-aged spread: Dean figures the constant adrenalin rush of going from one near-death situation to another is enough to keep them both looking thin and pretty for life.

Thin, anyway.

'Fried chicken!' he says one notch too loudly, and pulls over next to a scruffy little diner.

It's empty except for a couple of old guys nursing their coffee cups and a bored-looking waitress slumped at the counter. She perks up a bit when she sees them come in and hurries over to take their order. She eyes them both up and Dean half-considers flirting with her to pass the time, but then he sees shock and sympathy pass over her face at the sight of Sam's scar and changes his mind. Instead he orders extravagant amounts of grease and coffee, and forgives the woman slightly when he sees that the plate she brings Sam is heaped extra high. Just as well, because Sam really is hungry and vacuums up the meal like he hasn't seen food in weeks. They chat about nothing much while they eat, mostly concentrating on the taste of good fried chicken and biscuits. Eventually the waitress brings over coffee and pie and Dean feels ready to think about the job.

'So, strange fruit, huh? Any ideas on what we're dealing with here?'

Sam stirs another spoonful of sugar into his coffee. 'I'm not sure... not your run-of-the-mill monster, though. The bodies I saw... they hadn't just been killed randomly, there was some kind of purpose behind it.'

'Any idea what?'

'Raising power of some kind, I think, and whatever chooses to get its power that way is planning something pretty nasty. I think we'll need to take this one slowly, Dean; I don't want to walk into something major without getting more than half an idea of what's going on.'

Sam looks up then, smiles at Dean. 'Sorry for waking you last night, man. It could have waited till morning.'

'No problem... I'm glad you woke me.'

Sam's smile broadens and Dean risks a quick squeeze of his fingers under cover of reaching for the sugar.

Sam pulls the roadmap from his duffle and spreads it out across the table, tracing their route. 'We're making good time.'

Dean squints at the map. 'Yeah - we did good, setting off when we did. It's a shame we didn't have a chance to say bye to Jo and the kids before we left, though. That Jordy's one smart little kid - it was fun teaching him.'

'Yeah, you looked like you did a good job.' Sam smiles again, but this time it seems a little forced, and he quickly glances down and away. Dean tries a couple more topics of conversation, but it seems like Sam's in the mood for silence now, so instead he signals for the check and then goes to take a leak, leaving Sam to pay. When he gets back he tosses the car keys at his brother.

'You've had enough beauty sleep, princess. It's my turn to ride easy.'

Sam catches the keys and they head back to the car.

* * *

It's gone nine by the time they reach Corydon and they're both pretty tired. Again. Dean wonders if they'll ever bounce back to their old fight - sleep - doitallagain selves, and hopes like fuck they will, because he may be over thirty but that's a long way from being over the hill. Dad never seemed to have any trouble, even when he was much older than Dean is now. Then again, he doesn't need to be reminded how much he's not Dad.

'You figure we need to get to work tonight?' he asks Sam.

His brother purses his lips, considering. 'Not so much. I think if we grab the local papers, maybe get something to eat and quiz a few people, that'll be enough for tonight. Whatever's coming... I get the feeling it's working to a schedule. Nothing's going down tonight.'

They check in at the Super8 - pricier than their usual haunts, but it has wireless and they've saved money staying at the Roadhouse - and head out to find food. Dean's in the mood for a beer, and it's easier to talk to people when they're drinking anyway, so they wind up in a scruffy little bar eating wings. Once they're done, Sam sits at the bar talking to a couple of girls - his scar doesn't seem to put them off, just makes them let their guards down more - and Dean plays a few rounds of pool. The guys at the table are relaxed and easy to talk to, and Dean enjoys himself, but they're not giving out a scrap of information that's useful to him. He wins a couple of games, then decides to call it a night before his newfound friends decide he's hustling them - which he's not, for once - and swings by the bar to extricate Sam.

'Anything?'

Sam shakes his head. 'Nothing. I got the conversation round to weird happenings, tried suggesting girls like them should be careful walking alone in this area, but it didn't seem like they had anything to tell. Maybe I was wrong about this having already started.'

'Guess we can check out the papers tomorrow.'

They head back to the motel and Sam jumps in the shower. He comes back with a towel wrapped around his waist, hair damp and curling at the nape of his neck, and he's so beautiful Dean wants to go down on his knees in front of him. They haven't done... anything like that since Sam was hurt, though, and he's not too sure how it would be received now, so he just heads for the shower himself. By the time he gets back Sam's already asleep, sprawled across the whole of one bed. Normally they sleep together when they're in motels, but when Sam checked them in he took a twin room, so Dean's not sure if he should make Sam budge over. In the end he gets into the other bed, figuring Sam's too out of it to move. It takes a long time to fall asleep.

* * *

  
Next morning, they grab bagels from the lobby to eat in their room, and take advantage of the wireless internet to do a bit of research. Sam's still in a quiet mood, intent on the laptop, looking for anything which might fit the details of his vision. Dean flicks through Dad's journal - augmented now by all the things they've seen or heard of in their own years on the road - looking for some creature or ritual that might demand this kind of killing.

An hour later Sam slams the laptop closed, frustrated.

'Nothing! Local news isn't worth crap: no murders or anything else big enough to show up, nothing that hints at the kind of thing I saw.'

'Dude, maybe it's just a false alarm. No job for us?' Even as he says it Dean knows it's BS. Sam's visions have never sent them in completely the wrong direction, even if they're sometimes so inscrutable that it seems that way until afterwards.

Sam rubs at the bridge of his nose, frowning, and Dean decides enough is enough. 'C'mon man, time for some decent coffee. We can get some fresh air, check out the papers at the diner.'

They end up not in a diner, but a fancy coffee joint where Sam can feed his froofy coffee habit. They comb the local papers, but find nothing. Eventually Dean zones out, mind worrying at the question of why Sam's been so quiet. He's half-listening to the sounds of the morning trade around him when he hears a woman say, 'Well, I think it's shameless! You would've thought they'd have enough of a sense of decency not to put a notice in the paper.'

'The girl was only 15, Susan, have a heart.'

Dean snaps to attention and looks around for the source of the voices. He spots two middle-aged women across the room, tutting over a copy of The Democrat. It's the main local paper, the exact same one that Sam's poring over. Dean grabs it, ignoring Sam's yelp of protest, and leafs through until he finds the 'Births, Deaths and Marriages' section. Given the extreme nature of the deaths in Sam's vision, they'd been looking for news reports, sensational accounts of gory murders, but now Dean's looking with a different eye. It's no wonder they'd missed it before - the notice the women were exclaiming over is no more than a couple of lines:

Brianna Gabriel: b. 28 April, 1997, d. 26 September, 2012, aged 15.  
Wyandotte, IN. Rest in Peace.

'Look at this, Sam.' He shoves the page under his brother's nose. 'Fifteen-year-old girl died, next town over, and that's all the paper prints. That seem funny to you?'

Sam squints at the death notice and his face darkens. He drains the last of his coffee and gets to his feet. 'Very funny. I think we need to visit the library.'

* * *

The library is Sam's domain, so Dean peels off once they get there, leaving Sam to speak to the librarian at the desk. He spots a cluster of easy-chairs over by the rack of magazines and figures he can go through the papers again, see if there's maybe one here that they didn't see in the coffee shop. Failing that, he can always check out the latest _Guns and Ammo_. He flops down in one of the chairs and watches Sam nodding and smiling at the librarian, slipping into 'appealing geek' mode like he always does. After a couple of minutes Sam comes over and says, 'I think we should check for a pattern, so I'm going to have a look at the archives. The Local History section's out back, you wanna come?'

'Nah, I'll leave the school work to you, geekboy. I'll just hang out here, maybe speak to a few people. Could be that someone here can give us some more information.'

'Yeah right, Dean. I know you're hoping for a sneaky peek at Vogue. You just sit tight and pick up a few skincare tips while I go and actually do some work.'

Dean flips him the bird and settles down in his chair, prepared for a long wait. Once Sam hits the books there's no telling how long he'll be at it. Flipping through Guns and Ammo, Dean notes there's a new model of the Desert Eagle. Maybe they should think about buying a new pistol. He browses another couple of magazines and then looks around for something else to read - _not Vogue, thank you very much, Sam_ \- and meets the eyes of a girl sitting opposite.

She _is_ a girl, not a woman by a long shot, but she's holding _American Baby_ in one hand and the other is curled loosely around her abdomen. _Jeez_, Dean thinks, _she only looks about fifteen_. Still, if he didn't get anyone knocked up when he was fifteen it was through pure dumb luck, so he probably shouldn't be surprised.

_Fifteen_. A thought strikes him and he reaches for the library copy of _The Democrat_, then glances back at the kid like he's just wanting to be polite.

'Hi,' he says, giving her his best non-threatening smile. It's normally easy enough to make women warm to him, but he wants her to think he's a nice guy, not some perv who macks on little girls.  
__  
'Hi,' she says and smiles shyly back.

Dean casts around for something to say next. He never had any trouble talking to girls when he was a kid, but the kind of lines he used to use then are no good in this situation. Plus, it's obviously dumb asking her about school or anything like that, since she's sitting here in the library on a week day and clearly about to enter into the bit of life where you start asking other people about school.

Well, then, the obvious is what he'll talk about.

'Congratulations. When are you due?' he asks, hoping that this isn't a question that's going to make her bust out crying or something. It seems like he's made the right call, because her face lights up.

'The beginning of March,' she says. 'A spring baby.'

March isn't really spring in Dean's book, but he expresses further congratulations and lets himself get drawn into a conversation about whether she wants a boy or a girl, and does it really make any difference, and babycare in general. Eventually he glances down at the newspaper and makes out he's just noticed Brianna's obit.

'God, awful, some fifteen-year-old kid died near here,' he says. It's about the clumsiest opening gambit ever, but he figures it'll at least establish whether the kid's even heard about Brianna.

It does more than that.

The kid's eyes fill with tears and she leans towards Dean. 'Brianna. It's in the _paper_? An article?'

'Just a death notice,' Dean says, and shows her.

'_God_,' she says. 'I wonder who put it in? Her parents, I guess, except they seemed like they weren't even going to admit she was dead.'

'Oh?' Dean says softly, trying to draw out more information without sounding like a ghoul.

She swallows, looks up at Dean. 'Brianna was my friend,' she says quietly. 'She was my friend, and something awful happened to her, and nobody seems to care except me. No one will...' - she swallows hard - 'No one will even _talk_ about her.'

She's breathing fast, body tensed as if for flight, and Dean's half-afraid to ask her anything else in case she loses it totally. But he's gonna have to, damn it, because this is the shit he needs. He draws breath to ask her what happened to Brianna, but before he can get the words out the kid's speaking again.

'She was in my year at school. We didn't share any classes - I didn't know her at all before this year - but then, well, we both got pregnant and we kind of got to know each other. Her parents absolutely freaked when she told them, kicked her out of the house and refused to speak to her, and even though my parents took the whole thing a lot more calmly, they weren't exactly pleased. So it was good to have someone who understood, and then it turned out she was a really nice girl anyway. We used to hang out here, the librarian lets us use the adult computers; you can't look up pregnancy stuff on the kids' ones.'

All of this is beside the point to Dean, but he can hear that she needs to say it, probably hasn't had anyone else to say it to, so he just keeps listening.

'She ended up living out on the edge of town, they have some studios there that take you if you're on welfare. She was walking back out there and she just... never made it. They found her body two days later, out in the forest. They say that she hung herself, but she wouldn't have, she couldn't!'

'Sometimes people do crazy things when they're desperate,' Dean says gently.

'She wasn't desperate! She was struggling, sure, thanks to her oh-so-supportive parents, but she was happy to be having a baby! And even if she had been, I don't see how anyone could think she'd done _that_ to herself.'

'Done what?' Dean asks, but he has a horrible feeling he already knows what's coming.

'_Slit open her own belly_,' the girl hisses, and now she does cry, horrified, gasping sobs.

Dean pats her arm helplessly and looks around wildly for help. He's relieved to see Sam heading back towards him, hands full of Xeroxed copies.

Then he spots the librarian next to his brother, eyes fixed on the girl and a look of fury on her face. _Shit_, has he got some damage control to do.

* * *

  
Half an hour later Dean's thinking - not for the first time - that there's maybe something in the whole college education thing, because Sam has situation management skills that seem to have passed Dean by entirely. They've faced hysterical people crying about death nearly as often as they've faced the things that do the killing, but give Dean a choice between a gun and a box of tissues and he'll take the gun any time. It's a miracle to him how Sam managed to size up the situation in under a minute, calm the girl - who turns out to be called Paige, well done Dean for bothering to ask - and convince the librarian that his brother's not some kind of evil, girl-molesting freak.

They're helped with this last one by the fact that, unlike some of the librarians Dean's encountered, Ms. Pennington seems more interested in making sure Paige is OK than in avenging the disturbance to her library. When he comments on this to Sam, his brother rolls his eyes and says, 'Well, duh', but having been the victim of more than one righteous smiting by library staff in the past, Dean's still vaguely shellshocked.

Not only has the librarian not called the cops on them, she's provided Sam with a sheaf of information on everything from local family history and folk tales of the area to gory murder reports, which Sam proceeds to spread out across every available surface the second they get back to their room. Normally there's a limit to what you can ask for before people start to look at you funny and enquire exactly what it was you were researching again, but that doesn't seem to have been a factor here.

'Dude, what did you tell her? Was the chick part of the Demon Hunters' Library Association or something?'

'I told her I was doing a thesis on memory and culture, but I don't think she cared, to be honest. She didn't ask many questions about why I wanted the information, just kept bringing stuff out. Their local history library rocks! It has its own building and everything!' Sam's eyes light up at the memory.

Dean shakes his head in despair. Only his dork brother could get that excited about a library.

'You actually find anything useful in that lot, or are you too busy coming in your pants about the joys of research?'

'I dunno... much as I hate to admit it, I think your little library buddy's story might be a better place to start looking. I did find another report of a young girl being murdered in this area - about the same age - but that was back in 2004.'

'Same kind of deal?' Dean asks.

'Difficult to tell. It's like Brianna, no big story, just a couple of lines. I might not have spotted it at all if the librarian hadn't mentioned it. So - two potentially linked deaths. But the other girl was cremated - Ms. Pennington knew that much - and it's going to be a lot harder to ask questions about something that happened eight years ago.' Sam pauses, considering.

'A lot damn harder,' Dean decides. 'I say we find out a bit more about Brianna and come back to looking into this other kid's death if we have to.'

Sam nods and hauls himself up off the bed. 'Morgue, parents, place of death?'

'Food first,' Dean corrects. 'Then we can start digging around for more information.'

Dean's stomach is growling - too much coffee and no cooked food - and he's not about to let Sam start trailing around town without eating something more than half-stale motel bagels. Anyway, they've got plenty of leads now - how hard can it be to dig up some real information?

* * *

  
Damn hard, turns out to be the answer, because nobody whatsoever seems to want to talk to them about what happened to Brianna. They try talking their way into her parents' house, but her mother takes a horrified look at Sam's face and shoots a mistrustful one at Dean's, before hissing, 'Haven't people like you brought my family enough trouble?' and slamming the door shut. Often that kind of reaction presages long, information-rich rants, but in this case the door stays shut. Enquiries among the neighbours don't bring them much more, except that it becomes clear that 'people like you' is less a useful pointer towards potential murderers and more to do with the typical evangelical reaction to good-looking young men who probably get teenage girls pregnant.

The morgue staff are hostile, and the morgue itself is grim. The scent of old blood and disinfectant reminds Dean queasily of the days and nights he spent at the hospital, wondering whether Sam was going to wake up and how he would look him in the eye when he did. Looking at dead bodies is never exactly the fun part of their job, and Brianna's is particularly bad. The slash across her abdomen hasn't touched her belly, as he had expected from Paige's account - it's lower, criss-crossing her pelvis. Her hands are cut up too, marked where she obviously tried to protect herself, and her face is so disfigured from the strangulation that Dean doubts her friends would recognise her now. Only her feet and legs are unmarked: white and perfect. Looking at the body tells Dean that Sam's right that they're dealing with some sick evil, but apart from that it doesn't give them any new information.

They end up driving disconsolately around in the rain, looking for the place where Brianna's body was found. The police have proved strangely intransigent when it comes to giving strangers details of their murder reports, and 'in the woods' isn't really giving them enough to go on.

On their fourth circuit of the outskirts of town, Dean suddenly spots Paige standing at a bus stop, looking wet and miserable. After the scene in the library it had seemed unwise to press her any further, but her reappearance now feels like a gift. He pulls the car over.

'Want a lift somewhere?'

Paige gets in the car without a second of hesitation, and Dean feels like giving her a lecture on the insanity of driving off with strange men when her friend's just been butchered. That would be a bit self-defeating, though. He bites his lip and checks they've got no weapons on view instead.

'I'm sorry I freaked out in the library,' Paige says. 'I guess I'm a bit out of control at the moment - hormones.'

'Paige,' Sam says gently. 'Your friend just died, you have no need to apologise for getting upset.'

'I shouldn't be getting upset,' Paige says, her voice unsteady. 'I should be getting angry.'

'Angry?' Sam asks, and then, 'Say, Paige, d'you have somewhere you need to be right away? You seem like you could use someone to talk to, and I for one feel like it would be easier to concentrate on talking if I had some food inside me.'

For a minute Dean's confused - why interrupt when it sounds like she's just about to get onto telling them something useful? - but then he realises that quizzing the kid about a bloody murder while she's trapped in the car with them might not be the best way to make her feel like she's safe. Besides, Paige is too thin - all birdlike bones and scrawny face around her rounded belly and boobs - and she could probably use a decent meal or three.

'Sammy-boy here's always hungry,' he says. 'You know a place round here we can talk while we eat?'

They end up in a little family pizza joint, pretty much empty this early on a weeknight. The Italian waitress clearly shares Dean's opinion of Paige's need for food, because she brings them plates of antipasti on the house and urges the girl to eat. She doesn't seem to think it's strange that two grown men should be eating with a fifteen-year-old girl, and after a while Dean realises that she's assumed they're family. Paige does look a little like him - green eyes, at least - and when you think that il Colosso is his brother it's not such a stretch of the imagination that people might mistake her for his sister. Hell, thinking about it, she's young enough that she could be his goddamn daughter.

It seems as if Paige has forgotten the emotion she felt in the car; she chatters on to them both quite freely, talking about her pregnancy and her hopes of getting an apartment for her and the baby and maybe going back to school someday.

'It's so cool that the first thing you said to me was "congratulations",' she says to Dean. 'Most people are all "oh, sorry" and "are you going to keep the baby?" Or else they look at me like I'm some kind of whore and ask me whether I know who the father is. You just... treated me like a person.'

Dean shifts in his seat, embarrassed.

'Well, we're not so much about the judging people. You're pregnant, you're happy, your kid won't have any weirder a life than most people.'

Sam shoots him a look before agreeing, 'Yeah, anyone can see you're gonna be a good mom.'

He regards Paige seriously from under his bangs for a moment, then applies himself to his plate of pasta once more.

The conversation lulls until the waitress brings them coffee, hot milk and biscotti - 'Mangia! Mangia!' - and presses a glass of some kind of sweet liqueur on Sam and Dean. Finally there's no way to ignore the real reason they're there any longer.

'Paige?' Dean says quietly. 'When you said you should be angry about Brianna, what did you mean?'

As soon as he asks the question he realises that Paige hadn't forgotten about the conversation in the car at all, because the look of anger and pain which is naked on her face is the same look that's been lurking beneath the surface all through the meal.

'Because of what I said,' she answers. 'There's no way that Brianna could have killed herself. It's obvious she was murdered, but nobody here seems to care. I mean - I know neither of us are exactly poster girls for the new America, but I thought all dead girls were straight-A students by default. Some crazy fucker's walking around out there and everyone's just happy to think she put that rope around her neck herself.' Paige twists her napkin in her hands, eyes filled with tears.

'We care, Paige.' Sam's voice is hard. 'There's a chance we can find out who did it, but we need your help. We need to know more about Brianna, about exactly what happened to her. Do you think you can do that?'

Paige swallows and nods. 'Brianna was my friend. If you can find out the truth, I owe her that at least.'

* * *

  
By the time they've finished talking to Paige and driven her home it's late, and Dean worries that they might be greeted by another set of angry parents. The lights are out at the house they pull up at, though, and when he asks Paige if her folks will be OK with her not having checked in she gives him a look that lets him know just how much that isn't an issue. He hopes she gets her own place soon.

Among the things she's told them is the exact place Brianna's body was found. It turns out it's not in Corydon itself, but out in the deeper woods over by Leavenworth. They drive over there without discussing it both of them feel Sam's vision hanging over them, a cold certainty that they haven't seen the worst yet, not by a long way. Maybe if they can do the job quick enough they won't have to.

Remembering Brianna's body, broken and bruised, Dean hopes like hell that they won't have to see the worst.

The clearing where Brianna was killed is pretty deep into the woods, deep enough that Dean wonders how the fuck she was found at all. The trees are dark and foreboding, oak and maple, and they look a sight older than most of the forest around here. There's no way anyone could believe that a fifteen-year-old girl would come out here to kill herself, even without the slashed belly and defence marks to show them that this was murder. This thing might be bigger than one evil fucker of a demon or monster, big like Burkitsville big, because the way nobody aside from Paige seems able to see what's gone down says that something's got most of these people in thrall.

_In which case, let's play it cool, Dean-o, because you've let yourself walk into enough fucked-up situations lately._

He puts his hand to the comforting solidity of the gun nestled in his jacket, and shoots Sam a look to let him know he needs to do the same. They prowl around the clearing, looking for anything that might tell them more than 'something evil happened here'.

It's easy enough to see where Brianna's body was, cut end of a rope still hanging from the branch of a tree. It's new nylon rope, the kind you could easily buy in Wal-Mart, and Dean figures that whatever they're dealing with, it's probably not the primordial creature type of evil. That just makes him even more sure that Corydon's mysterious blindness to 'evil fuckers stalking your neighbourhood' is not just down to the failures of the Indiana school system.

At first it seems like the rope's the only clue, everything else obliterated by the rain of the last few days, but Dean can feel the weight of evil pressing down around him, residue from a helluva nasty working. Finally he spots something on the opposite side of the clearing, low down on one of the trees.

'Sammy!' he calls quietly. 'What do you make of this?'

Sam bends to look at the mark Dean's seen, a crude carving in the bark of the tree. The details are almost obscured by moss, but it's still possible to make out a crude rectangle next to a sort of cross. Sam leans in closer, and then sucks his breath in sharply.

'Recognise this?'

'Yes... maybe... I've seen it recently, but I'm not sure where. I think we need to head back to the motel, do some more research.'

'Who woulda thought it,' Dean says, and rolls his eyes, but it feels good to be getting somewhere at last. If he's honest, the fact that getting somewhere involves getting out of the dark, wet woods and going back to a warm motel room has its appeal, too. He may be used to hanging out in cold and creepy places, but that doesn't mean it's his number one choice for a Friday night.

As soon as they get back to the motel, Sam shoves a handful of papers at Dean and starts leafing through a pile of his own. Dean dutifully starts looking through, searching for anything which resembles the symbol he'd found. Half an hour and innumerable local newspaper reports later, he's reconsidering the notion that being in a warm motel doing research is preferable to the gloomy woods side of the gig.

'Hynan!' Sam says suddenly.

'Never had one,' Dean can't resist saying, even though he knows Sam's found something. 'Not of my own, anyway.' He smirks at his brother.

Sam heaves a long-suffering sigh and ignores the comment.

'Hynan,' he says again. 'He was some kind of local worthy back in the Fifties - he endowed a couple of the schools. Apparently he was an ancient history enthusiast, only for enthusiast read obsessive. He wrote a couple of books on the Mayan civilisation, although reading between the lines it seems like his ideas were pretty far out: it says here one of the books sparked a bit of controversy.'

Sam stares into space for a moment, with an expression that Dean identifies as 'research stoned'.

'Anyway - ' he prompts, and Sam refocuses with a start.

'Anyway, Hynan was really into the idea that this year was majorly significant: it's supposed to herald the end of a calendar cycle and the end of the world. It also coincides with a transit of Venus, which was really important to the Mayan calendar. And guess how they represented Venus?'

Sam taps the paper, and Dean's not especially surprised to see a symbol which is recognisably the same as the one they'd found on the tree, if a lot more ornate.

'So, what? This Hynan dude's decided he needs to cue up a few blood sacrifices for the end of days?'

'Man, I hope not. He's been dead for sixty years - this is his obituary.'

'Could be his ghost working. If he was as obsessed as you say, maybe he just couldn't rest knowing he was missing out on the big finale?'

'Dean, you said it yourself, it isn't something supernatural that killed Brianna, unless Wal-Mart have branched out into serving the other world. Whoever it is, they're definitely raising power - I could feel that in the vision, not to mention the stink of it all round that clearing.'

'So we find out who it is that's doing it, and we shoot the fucker.'

Sam gives him a look that says 'not that simple, buddy', and Dean sighs.

It would be so much easier if this was a salt and burn gig, or even if they were dealing with some pretty hardcore creature like a vampire. Dean kind of misses the 'kill everything in sight' days: more and more they seem to be running up against the kind of nasty that doesn't have the courtesy to be undead. When it's some human there's always research, and sneaking around looking for amulets, and a lot of other crap that ends up being just about as dangerous and illegal as the killing things option.

'What, then?' Dean demanded. 'If it's not Hynan, who else would've known all this Mayan mumbo-jumbo?'

'Well, anyone who came within shouting distance of Hynan, by the sound of it. It seems like he was a bit of a bore. But that was sixty years ago - I doubt there's anyone around who can remember him. Not that's fit enough to be abducting young girls, at any rate. But he wrote books, remember, and he left all his notes to the library here when he died.'

'So we check out who's been reading up on Hynan and we've got our man? How do we deal with him once we get that far?'

Sam gnaws at his lip. 'It's hard to be sure. I'm not too up on Mayan mythology, and whoever it is is using some kind of perversion of the original ideas anyway. But if we're dealing with someone raising power - a person - they'll need somewhere to focus that power. I have a few ideas about what they could be using, but I'll need to read up a bit more.'

He flips open the lid of the laptop and gets to work. Dean regards him for a few minutes and then starts setting out their weapons to clean.

'Like to give me any hints on what we'll be needing tomorrow, geekboy?' He starts on cleaning his favourite pistol, metal heavy and reassuring in his hands.

It strikes him that most people wouldn't find this scene so familiar and comforting. Then again, they're not most people.

* * *

It's late by the time Dean's gotten all the weapons primed to his satisfaction. Sam flakes out about half an hour before, after suggesting they take the rock salt rounds along just in case Hynan does decide to make an appearance. Dean checks through their arsenal once more, then uses the can before stripping down for bed.

There's no question of sleeping alone tonight - Sam's covered the other bed with Xeroxes and scrawled notes, just the way Dad used to do his research. Dean hesitates for a second before crawling in next to Sam, feeling oddly nervous. Between illness and single beds and being in places where they had to be watching their backs, it's been a while since they curled up together as a matter of course. It's always felt like some kind of crazy miracle that Sam wanted him there at all and now, seeing Sam turned away to hide his scar, it doesn't seem like Dean's earned the right.

'Come on, Dean,' he mutters to himself. 'What are you, some kind of fucking pussy?'

It's cold standing there in nothing but t-shirt and shorts, so he quashes his uncertainty and crawls into bed.

Sam's sprawled diagonally across the bed, hogging the space like he always does, body heavy and slack with sleep. He radiates warmth, and Dean curls up against his back and soaks it up. His brother shifts slightly, and Dean feels the rounded curve of his ass through the thin fabric of their shorts. His cock swells in response, and he wriggles until he lies flush with Sam, cock resting at the dip where his spine curves in and out to his ass. He aches to move against his brother, to put his lips to the curve of Sam's neck and kiss and suck until Sam whimpers and moans, but Sam's sleeping. He needs his sleep, they both do if they're going after some crazy sorcerer with a fetish for stringing up little girls. Dean checks for the gun under his pillow and forces his mind to blankness. He's got Sammy's back: that's enough.


	3. Chapter 3

The next morning, Dean drops Sam at the library to do some more research, and heads back out to the woods to see if he can figure out anything else from seeing the clearing in daylight. Sam catches at Dean's arm as he leaves, looks as if he'd like to protest at Dean going out there alone, but the sense of time running out is hanging over both of them, and in the end he just tightens his fingers a moment before letting his hand drop and turning towards the library.

It's a sunny day, but the approach to the clearing seems as gloomy as it had the previous night. Dean parks the car a ways up from the site itself: if whoever they're dealing with is there, he doesn't want to announce his presence, and there's a chance he might find something on the track.

Sure enough, there are faint tyre marks in the mud, almost obliterated by the Impala's tracks from the previous night. Dean swears under his breath, because they'd been so focused on seeing the place that it had never even occurred to him that driving up there was as good as hanging a 'we were here' sign on one of the trees. No point crying over it now, though, so he just draws his gun. Maybe this fucker's ready for them now, but damned if Dean won't be ready for _him_.

Apart from the tyre tracks, there are no visible signs of anyone having been up to anything in the near vicinity. But the feeling of evil power he and Sam had felt in the clearing is still present, pressing in on Dean like smoke, acrid and heavy.

The sensation increases as Dean approaches the ring of older trees, every rustling leaf making him more tense and alert. He's almost at the marked tree when the silence finally breaks: screech and clatter filling the clearing, assailing his ears.

Dean's gun snaps up as something black comes right at his face.

He looses off a shot on instinct and it falls to the ground.

It's a bird. A big, black, mean motherfucker of a bird, but that's all.

Dean tells himself his heart isn't beating faster, not at all, and looks around for any more wildlife that might be looking to audition for villain of the week. Instead he notices something else: a faint glimmer of light shining at the foot of a tree. He scrabbles in the dirt till he can see what it is: the corner of a glittery scarf, the kind of cheap bit of pretty that girls wear to brighten up an outfit. It's clear that there's something else under there, and Dean digs at the ground a bit more, a sick, heavy feeling in his stomach.

He knows what to expect, but it's still a shock when what's left of a girl's face emerges through the dirt. It's badly decomposed, so it's impossible to identify any features beyond the long blonde hair. Dean swallows convulsively and wonders where this poor kid came from, that her disappearance didn't even show up on any local news reports. She deserves to be exhumed and given a proper burial, but there's no way they can do that right now, not unless they want to get snarled up in a whole world of complications with the local sheriff. Dean brushes the dirt back over her instead, covering the area with leaves to make it look undisturbed, and swears that the bastard who did this will suffer.

* * *

When Dean drives back into town, Sam's waiting outside the library, clutching a cup of coffee and looking jittery.

'OK, we're looking for Wyandotte - head West,' Sam says, jumping in the car and offering Dean a bakery bag and a can of Coke.

'Thanks, man, but I really don't feel hungry right now.'

The image of the murdered girl is still fresh in his mind, and he doesn't feel like he'll want to eat at all until they've tracked down whoever did it. He's seen plenty of horrible things, doing this job, but somehow the fucked-up shit people do is always the worst. Demons and vampires - OK, they're nasty motherfuckers, but evil's sort of natural to them. It doesn't mean they don't deserve to die, but there was never a moment when they sat down and made that choice. Dean's not unfamiliar with the notion that people can have the kind of life that makes them feel they've got no choice either, but he doesn't hold with that. Everyone's got to stand up and be counted.

He wishes like hell that they were dealing with anything else, because the thing that makes the human weirdos so damn sick is the same thing which makes dealing with them complicated. Someone who'd do that to little Brianna, or to that nameless girl rotting away under the trees, that girl who got up one morning and put on a sparkly scarf to brighten up her day... death's too good for them, as far as Dean's concerned. But that's not a decision he and Sam can make: Dean's learned that the hard way.

He tells Sam about the second body and his brother's face darkens.

'How long do you think she'd been dead?'

'A couple of months?'

Sam gazes into the distance for a moment, muttering numbers under his breath.

'Then it's pretty certain that he is using some kind of Mayan ritual. Which fits with what I've just found out, because it seems that someone _has _shown an interest in the papers of our dear departed Mr Hynan recently. The librarian was pretty reluctant to tell me anything, though: they're really stringent about keeping client reading records private.'

'So, what? You pull a Mulder and Scully on her, pretend we were government agents of some kind?'

'No, man, and it's lucky that we stayed clear of that from the start, or I'm not sure she would've helped me at all. She was pretty antsy - I got the impression she got stung way back when by the FBI getting trigger-happy with the 'anti-terror' laws - but I managed to convince her we were on the level. I think she really likes Paige and her friend: she's prepared to believe Brianna's death wasn't suicide, even if most people around here aren't.'

Dean doesn't even pretend to have half a clue what Sam's talking about, nor does he much care, except to be glad that they and Paige aren't alone in their unwillingness to swallow this suicide bullshit.

'So who are we looking for, Sammy? This chick obviously hit your research pleasure-centres, but a little less _Sleepless in Seattle _and a little more information would be good.'

Sam shoots Dean a bitchy look. 'A Mr Jack Resch. Apparently he started checking out Hynan's books back in 2004 - which happens to be the last time there was a transit of Venus, not to mention the same year that other young girl died - and this year he's looked at the entire estate. Plus, he lives out on the edge of Wyandotte, right where our friend Mr Hynan had his house.'

Dean narrows his eyes. 'Sounds like the son of a bitch we're looking for. You think he's just a crazy, or is he aiming to do something in particular?'

His brother leafs through his notes, pursing his lips. 'It's hard to know exactly what Resch is doing - or trying to do - but Hynan's notes harp on the theme of taking control of the changing of cycles. He seems to have thought that the right rituals done at the right time could push things a certain way, determine which cycle we'll move into next. Since whatever spin Resch is putting on this involves murdering little girls, I think we can safely assume that the direction he's intending to push is not a very pleasant one.'

The image of the two girls Resch already got his hands on rises up in Dean's mind's eye, and he steps on the gas a little bit harder. He guesses all this shit is important, but he doesn't want a lesson in mythology; he just wants to know how to put a stop to this bastard.

Sam seems to sense his impatience, or maybe he's just finished with the background details, because he gets to the point at last. 'Resch has raised power both times he's killed, and he has to be focusing that somewhere. I think - based on Hynan's notes - that we should be looking for a skull, maybe set in a tree. I'm kinda surprised that we didn't find it in the woods, but if it was in that clearing we'd have seen it. I guess Resch thinks that spot is too exposed or something. So, I figure it'll be at his house, or near it at least.' He stares into space for a second, tapping his fingers absently against the dashboard.

'OK, so we find this skull at the house. Then what?'

Sam shrugs slightly. 'If we destroy the skull, we at least won't be dealing with a ton of blood power. Once we've stripped him of that, we can figure out what to do with him.'

It's not much of a plan, but that's never stopped them before. Dean drives, and hopes like hell they'll get through OK this time.

* * *

Resch's place is a bland-looking timber house, low to the ground like most of the places out here. It's peaceful and empty-looking, no car in the driveway, and right from the moment they pull up outside Dean feels like they're on the wrong track. Evil can lurk behind stripped wood and bright lights just as easy as gothic ruins, but there's no real sense of that here. If Resch's skull - or power amulet, or whatever the fuck he's using - is somewhere nearby, then the kind of power they'd felt out in that clearing should be even more palpable here. Instead the place just feels vaguely creepy, the kind of creepy you feel when you walk past the house of the guy everyone reckons puts razorblades in the apples he gives out to trick-or-treaters.

'You sure this is our guy, Sammy?' he asks.

Sam frowns. 'Not completely sure, no, but if it's not then we're on the wrong track altogether. Why, have you got a better idea?'

It's not the most reassuring answer Sam's ever given, and Dean wonders who the fuck stole his know-it-all geek brother and left this reasonable 'consider all factors' clone in his place.

'Nope,' he says, and gets on with the job of checking the house, but he can't shake the feeling of uneasiness.

The door clicks open easy enough when Dean applies a credit card to the lock, revealing a poky little kitchen. It's basically clean, but with the kind of dinginess that says the person who lives here has been alone for a long time. The other rooms are pretty much the same - worn furniture, a few books, a TV that's seen better days. Nothing which suggests that Resch spends his time slaughtering innocent girls for arcane rituals.

'Dean!' Sam calls down from upstairs, and Dean starts and puts his hand to his gun before he realises that his brother doesn't sound even slightly worried.

'What?' he calls back, trying to ignore the fact he just reacted like some greenhorn out on his first hunt.

'Come up here - I'd say we've definitely found our man.'

Dean heads upstairs to find Sam leaning against the desk in a poky little study. The furniture in here is in better shape than the rest of the house, new-looking computer sitting on a sturdy desk. It's obvious right away why Sam's certainty about Resch is back, because the shelves are full of books on Mayan mythology, the desk piled high with notes. Sam points at the calendar hanging by the desk, and Dean sees that it's been marked out into segments.

'Definitely him,' Sam says, tapping his finger on the twenty-sixth, which has been circled in red. 'Cycles of thirteen days, and this isn't the only date circled. He's stepping up the sacrifices as the equinox gets closer.'

'No he isn't,' Dean says. ''Cause we'll be finding him first.'

Sam nods, face tense.

'I think we need to do it fast, Dean. Look here, he's marked in the opposition of Uranus today. It didn't mean anything to the Mayans, as far as I know, but it doesn't look as if Resch is too picky about which traditions he uses.'

'Then we've gotta find him. This place is a bust - wherever he's running this shit from, it's not here,' Dean says, already in motion, sweeping Sam along with him down to the car. They haven't even checked out the grounds yet, but the suspicion that they're looking in entirely the wrong place is a conviction now.

He's moving so fast that he doesn't even notice the guy standing in the driveway until he hears his voice.

'You, there! Can I help you?'

Dean plasters his most ingratiating smile on his face, fighting down the impulse to just shoot the guy now.

'Mr Resch?'

The guy's face clouds with confusion and suspicion, and it's just as well Dean didn't go with the 'shoot first and ask questions later' approach, because he answers, 'No, I'm his neighbour. Name of Ballard. What're you boys doing out here?'

'Good afternoon, Mr Ballard,' Sam answers smoothly, and Dean realises with relief that he's not going to have to be the one giving the cover story. 'We heard Mr Resch might be looking for some - er - some guys to help him with a bit of maintenance. Fix up the roof, do the jobs that're too big for him to manage on his own. We're in that line of work, so we thought we'd head over and see if we could help him out.'

Dean guesses that Sam's right to have banked on Resch not being the kind of guy who'd have friends happy to pitch in and help him out, because the neighbour's face clears at once.

'I see. Well, the place sure could use fixing up, but I'm afraid you boys are out of luck. You won't catch Resch here for a few days.'

He delivers this information in a satisfied manner, the smile on his face familiar to Dean from hundreds of jobs: _There's bad news here and it's not happening to me. _

Sam keeps right on smiling back, unruffled, and it's amazing how he still manages to pull off the clean-cut college boy look, even with the scar marring his face.

'That's too bad, sir, we could really use the work right now. Do you know if there's any way we could get in contact with him?'

Ballard sucks in a long intake of breath, enjoying his moment.

'Well now, you might find him over at the caves. He works up there, likes to go spelunking at the end of the season, once they're closed to tourists.'

As soon as he says it, Dean knows that's where they need to be, is cursing himself for a fool because he'd seen the sign for those caves on the way over and never put two and two together. He waits impatiently while Sam asks a few more questions, gets proper directions to the caves, checks what car Resch drives and asks how they'll recognise him. It makes sense to get all this information, but Dean's still feeling that urgent need to move, the sense that they might already be too late.

Finally they get free from Ballard and make it to the car. It's an effort to drive like they're just two law-abiding folk looking for work, and by the time they round the corner Dean's gripping the wheel so hard his knuckles are white. His eyes meet Sam's.

'It's bad,' Sam says.

They don't say any more, but Dean floors the gas.

* * *

Resch's truck is in the parking lot of the caves, right next to the visitors' centre. The rest of the lot is empty, shutters pulled down on the cafe and ticket booth. The main entrance to the caves is locked up tight, too, but there are several natural entrances. Dean thinks, not for the first time, that they should have more in the way of equipment for squeezing into small, dark spaces, because it's clear they're going to have to crawl through some shitty little gap holding guns and flashlights and who knows what else, and he just knows the rocks will be wet. He's willing to bet that if he crawled into a cave in the goddamn Sahara, the rocks would still be wet.

He's not wrong. They have to wrench aside a few metal bars to get into the narrow aperture, then ease themselves along through a space barely big enough to admit them. Once inside, there's enough room to stand up, but it's dark, a thick, underground darkness that presses in around them like it's looking for a place to get in. Dean feels Sam tense next to him, and remembers the last time they crawled down into some nasty hole.

Dean reaches back to squeeze Sam's arm, a silent assurance that things are going to go better this time.

They walk on in silence, flashlights pointed down at the ground so the light doesn't dazzle them and they don't advertise their presence too clearly to whatever's up ahead. This place is full of nooks and crannies, dark crevices and sparkling stalactites creating light and shadows which deceive the eye. There are plenty of tunnels where someone who knows the caves could hide, and Dean worries that they'll wander in here for hours without finding Resch, or stumble on him suddenly.

It's not a problem. They've only been walking a few minutes when they _hear_ Resch. He's laughing, a low, careless laugh like he's just remembered something amusing. Then they hear another voice, and Dean's throat burns with the desire to run forward, to kill, because it's a girl's voice, whimpering in terror.

His whole body tenses, and this time it's Sam soothing him, hand spread flat on his back in a gesture that holds him still.

They turn off their flashlights and inch forward, guns at the ready. It's not totally dark anymore, and Dean guesses by the red tinge to the light that Resch has a fire burning somewhere up ahead. The tunnel opens out suddenly and he sees that he's right: they're on the edge of a pretty big cavern with the fire on the other side. It's burning high, and it takes Dean a minute to pick out the figures next to it, outlined in black.

Then he hears that whimper again, and it all snaps into focus, because it's Paige there, held by her wrists and twisting away from the knife Resch is holding to her face. Resch is turned towards the fire, so he doesn't see them, even when Dean surges a few steps forward.

Sam pulls him back into the shadows and whispers, 'Hold it, man, we need to find this skull first.'

The shadows obscure the good side of his face, throwing the scar into sharper relief, and Dean feels like he's not looking at his brother at all, because since when do they stand by and watch while somebody is being murdered? He says as much to Sam, fighting to keep his voice low.

'Just one minute, Dean, just enough to figure out what we're dealing with here.' Sam's voice is urgent, almost pleading. 'I don't think he'll kill her now unless he has to. Most of the Mayan rituals were done after moonrise: he'll want to wait for that. I can feel some serious power down here: I'd rather deal with that first if we can.'

He turns to look at Dean full on, so Dean sees both sides of his face, the unmarred and the damaged. His eyes are wide and Dean sees that he's frightened, frightened like he hasn't been in years. That mark and that fear are both part of a price that Dean should be paying, and he curses himself for thinking they've changed Sam into someone who doesn't care about other people.

'OK,' he says. 'Look for the skull. But I'm keeping my eyes on that fucker, and the second he makes a move on Paige we're acting, Sam.'

They move out onto the cavern floor, stealthy and slow. Sam scans the cavern for the skull, while Dean keeps his gun trained on Resch. It looks like Sam was right about him not being ready to kill again yet, because he hasn't moved to hurt Paige in any way. Instead he just keeps running the knife through the air close to her skin, whispering to her. Paige has stilled, too frightened or maybe just too exhausted to try to get away, and she's given up on crying out. Only her eyes show the terror she must be feeling, wide and brimming with tears. Dean's willing to bet that Resch is getting some kind of sick pleasure out of whatever he's whispering to her, and his finger aches on the trigger of his gun.

Behind him, Sam slips on a loose stone, letting out a tiny gasp as he catches his balance. It's so faint even Dean can hardly hear it, but Paige's head snaps up and she looks straight at Dean. At the same moment, he sees where the skull is, high on the cave wall above Resch's head.

_Don't react, don't react_, Dean thinks desperately at Paige, and he sees her understand, bite back her cry of hope. But it's too late - Resch has already seen the change in her eyes and realised what it means. He turns to face Dean and pulls his knife up close against Paige's throat in one smooth movement.

'You boys have to spoil the party, even here?' he hisses.

Dean wonders for a second at the fact that Resch obviously isn't too surprised to see them, but he can't really spare much time for thinking about it, because he can feel the darkness pressing in on him all of a sudden, twice as hard as when they first entered the cave. Dean curses himself for a fool, because it's got nothing to do with being underground and everything to do with whatever sick power Resch is raising here.

Without even trying, he knows he won't be able to pull the trigger on the guy, and he hopes like hell that Sam will see the skull.

And will find some way of destroying it when it's ten feet above their heads.

The knife's still touching Paige's throat, her back arched so that the bulge of her pregnancy is very apparent, and all Dean can think to do is keep the guy talking.

'Well, it seems rude that we weren't invited,' he says. 'Seeing as you brought my friend along. Paige isn't too fond of this kind of party, by the way, so you might want to let her go.'

Resch laughs. 'Can't do it, I'm afraid. I need her for what I've got planned. Of course, this wasn't the venue I had in mind, but since you killed the guard at my usual spot I thought we'd enjoy a more intimate occasion here.'

He has to mean the bird Dean killed out in the woods. Clearly Resch went for the full package when he signed up for the 'evil magician' deal.

'Care to explain the theme? 'Cause human sacrifice is so last year, man.'

The man's lip curls. 'Human sacrifice? Hardly. I'm just performing a public service, disposing of these little whores and their brats. Not one of them's any better than she should be, living off the state, breeding more lowlives to leech off us all. Why do you think no one bothered to look into their deaths?'

Dean remembers Paige explaining her plans for her baby, eyes bright, hands curled protectively around her stomach, and feels sick.

'We're looking now,' he says, voice low and deadly. 'And we don't like what we see.'

Resch laughs again.

'Too bad you're a little late,' he says.

Dean feels the power around him increase, clamping down on him until he can hardly breathe. _C'mon, _ _Sammy_, he thinks. _Get that skull, man._

Resch turns leisurely back to Paige, gazing at her consideringly.

'Maybe there's no point in waiting till tonight to kill you,' he muses. 'Maybe a blood sacrifice right now would please the gods more.'

He pushes up Paige's t-shirt and draws the knife across her belly, making a shallow cut. Paige cries out, but doesn't struggle, obviously afraid to move in case it urges him to cut deeper.

Dean tries so hard to move that it feels like he's actually writhing, but he's fixed perfectly still and his breath is getting shorter. When he sees the skull move he thinks at first that it's just oxygen deprivation at work, but after a second it jerks forward again and he realises what's going on. _Oh no, Sam, this never ends well_, he thinks, but it's not like there're any other options, so he'll just have to work on the providing-a-diversion side of things.

'Pretty crappy sacrifices you're giving your gods, then,' he gasps out. 'I thought that virgins were the usual dish of the day, and here you are serving up some girls you think even humans won't want.'

Resch is deep enough into his evil overlord persona that he's pretty ready to talk, and he switches his attention away from Paige and back to Dean.

'On the contrary,' he says. 'That's the beauty of it - this way I get two sacrifices in one, mother and child. There's nothing more potent - and yet from society's point of view, nothing more troublesome.'

He's probably right. Whatever it is that's dishing out the power in response to these murders, Dean's willing to bet it's more demonic than divine, but both sides of the fence sure do like the fertility rites.

Resch ponders his own cleverness for a moment or two, then shows signs of wanting to return his attention to Paige. Dean tries desperately to think of something else to say, but the squeezing, black pressure of power is too strong to let him draw breath now. He fights against the suffocation, chanting _stay focused, stay focused_ in his head, the mantra from hundreds of hunts when he and Sam were tired and scared and Dad was urging them on. He fixes his eyes on the skull, willing Sam to make it, and is rewarded by the sight of it shooting forward, breaking free from the wall with a crack and heading right for his brother's head. Then his vision whites out.

* * *

When Dean wakes up it's clear only a few seconds have passed. Resch's face has shifted from self-satisfied smirk to a mix of fury and horror, and the mojo he's been working on Dean has lifted, because now his full attention is fixed beyond Dean, where Sam is frantically pouring a mix of herbs over the skull and chanting something in Latin. Sam's face is pale, scar standing out livid, and it's obvious that Resch is trying to do the same thing to him that he did to Dean, but with considerably less success. Sam's chest is heaving as he fights for breath, but he keeps right on chanting between gasps, and Resch is starting to look pretty exhausted himself.

Well, Dean can certainly help him with that. He crosses the cavern in what feels like about three strides and grabs Resch's arm, pulling the knife up to rest against Resch's own throat.

'Let him alone,' he hisses in the guy's ear. He won't actually slit his throat, but Resch doesn't know that.

Looking at Paige, bloody and frightened, and Sam turning blue on the other side of the cavern, Dean's not sure that _he_ knows that.

Resch does take a little of his power off Sam, but only so he can _shove_ against Dean, forcing his hand away. Dean wishes he'd thought this through a bit more, because it's clear that the guy has enough in him to hold them both, he just can't kill them both. Not at the same time, anyway. Still, if there's a line then Dean's damned if Sammy's going to be first in line. He grits his teeth and brings the knife back up against Resch's throat.

The second shove throws Dean across the cavern, but it's enough to let Sam finish his incantation. The next thing Dean knows the skull is burning, and Resch is dwindling from powerful sorcerer to the sad little middle-aged man he is.

'_Hun-carmé_,' he yells, and gestures towards Sam. Something black flies across the cavern, and then Sam's slumping to the floor. Resch sneers, looking plumped up with his own satisfaction again. Dean's raised his gun to fire at the bastard before he even knows what he's doing, finger squeezing down on the trigger, but at the last second Paige cries out and Dean's motion is arrested.

Paige is staring at the cavern ceiling, over where Sam is lying, and the darkness Dean had taken for shadows is moving, uncurling like a plume of smoke. The sight of it makes Dean's stomach curdle, because the last time he saw anything like it was before they finally defeated the Demon, and if that shit's happening over again they're in above their heads. Then he hears Resch choke out '_No_', and he realises that the black plume is not shadows or demons. It's bats.

Millions of tiny bats, and while Dean's man enough to admit this freaks him out a little bit, that's nothing compared to the effect they're having on Resch. All the blood has drained from his face, and he backs away from the swarm as fast as he can, stumbling over rocks and slip-sliding everywhere. He's muttering '_No, no, no_' and almost crying, and maybe the dude has a point, because the bats are coming right at him, flying into his face and clinging onto his clothes and hair. Mobbing him.

Resch staggers, clawing at his face to get rid of the creatures. His frantic motion backwards falters for a moment, whole body swaying back and forth under the onslaught of the bats, and then he's falling, swallowed up by some hidden crevice in the floor.

He screams as he falls, one horrible scream that cuts off suddenly in a final-sounding way.

Dean doesn't stop to look for the guy's body. He picks himself up and is kneeling next to Sam before he even knows he's moved.

Sam's still breathing. The bats move and swirl around the cavern, but higher now. Sam, Dean and Paige are all untouched.

* * *

It's full dark by the time they get out of the cave. Sam's groggy and stumbling from passing out and whatever the fuck Resch did to him; Paige is shaking from fear and loss of blood. Truth be told, Dean's feeling a bit weak-kneed himself.

When they get back to the Impala, Dean breaks out the first-aid kit and patches up Paige's stomach. It's a nasty cut, although nothing he and Sam would visit a doctor for. Paige isn't them, though, so Dean makes the hour-long drive to the hospital to get her checked out.

'You have insurance, Paige?' he asks, and when she shakes her head, _No,_ he breaks out a credit card they haven't used yet and gives it to the desk.

'She needs a full check-up,' he says. 'Whatever... just make sure that baby's OK.'

Sam gives him a look he can't interpret, then smiles weakly. There's a hell of a bump forming over his eye where he fell, and the hospital may be useless when it comes to dealing with magic-induced illness, but they can sure as hell check for concussion. Sam bitches and whines about how there's no need, but Dean grabs a doctor anyway. He even submits to being checked out himself, and the doctor cleans up some cuts and bruises he didn't even know he had.

No one asks them how they got hurt, and Dean doesn't waste time on worrying whether that's some side-effect of Resch's working, or whether they simply don't care enough to wonder. He's just glad not to have to think up any more bullshit stories.

When he and Sam have been checked out, they go to find Paige. She's sleeping, face pale and open, looking like the child she is. The doctor says she's fine, the baby's fine, she'll be able to go home tomorrow, and Dean promises that they'll be back to collect her. It occurs to him that they should let her parents know she's OK, but he's suddenly bone-tired and he can't think of Paige's last name or where they live. In the end he just leaves a handful of quarters by the bed and hopes Paige will do the job herself.

He drives his brother back to the motel on autopilot and drags them both up to the room. They get into bed together without saying anything and sleep wrapped close. Sam falls asleep immediately, and Dean thinks hazily that he should stay awake, keep checking in case the hospital was wrong about there being no concussion. But Sam's pulse is strong where Dean clasps his wrist, his body warm, and Dean falls asleep holding onto that.

* * *

When they hit the hospital the next morning Paige is awake, sitting up in bed and bright-eyed. She looks pleased to see Dean and Sam, and Dean marvels at the way she's coping with what happened to her. He'd expected fear and crying as it dawned on her how close they'd come to being too late - and maybe that'll come at some point - but for now her attention is turned inwards, focused on the baby.

'They did an ultrasound!' she says, and shows them a picture. It takes a minute for Dean to make sense of the black and white blotches, but then he blinks and it shifts into focus: a tiny figure, body curled around a big head.

'It's a baby,' he says, and the next thing Paige is grabbing his hand and pressing it to her belly.

'I think I felt it move, do you feel it?' she says, splaying his fingers across her bulge.

Dean can't feel anything at all, but a grin spreads across his face and he says again, 'It's a baby', and that seems to be enough for Paige. He looks across to share the moment with Sam, but his brother's eyes are dark, mouth tight and unhappy, and he won't meet Dean's gaze.

They drive Paige home, and Dean's glad to see that her parents look genuinely worried and pleased and all the things they should when their missing daughter is returned to them. Driving away, he says to Sam, 'You ever wonder where the father is?'

Sam shrugs. 'The father of her baby? It doesn't seem like he's around. I guess it's some other kid, probably doesn't want any part of it.'

'How could you not want to be part of that?' Dean says. It's the dumbest question ever, because god knows if he'd gotten some chick pregnant when he was fifteen he would have wanted to be ten states away before the baby came on the scene, but when he thinks about the feel of Paige's belly, taut under his hand, it seems insane that anyone should pass up the chance to be there with her.

Sam's quiet the rest of the journey, face still pale under his bangs, scar standing out more livid than usual, and when they get back into town Dean makes him eat and go back to bed. He'd like to get out of this town, but he doesn't think that Sam's up to the journey yet. When he suggests a day of weapon cleaning and cable TV, Sam's jaw juts in a way that says he'd like to argue the point, but he winces instead and Dean sees him give in to the fact that the whole showdown with Resch really was too much. His brother might have more control over his powers these days, but there's a price to be paid for moving things around with your mind, even without the toll of whatever it took to fight off Resch.

They eat in the same Italian restaurant they'd taken Paige to. The owner looks concerned when she sees how pale Sam is, and loads his plate with even more food than the last time. Afterwards, Dean takes Sam back to the motel and then hits the bars alone.

He hustles pool in six different bars across town. Normally he wouldn't hit so many, or hustle people for so much, but he figures the folk in this town owe something. He puts all the money he wins in an envelope and drops it off at Paige's.

* * *

They ship out early the next day - don't even bother with more than coffee before they hit the road. It feels good to be getting out of Corydon, even though Dean feels weird about leaving Paige to fend for herself. She's a tough cookie, though, and he figures she'll make out OK.

They're crossing the border into Illinois - and Dean's thinking about stopping for lunch - when Sam speaks.

'Where are we headed, Dean?'

Dean starts at the question, because the truth is he hasn't really thought about it. He's just driving.

'I guess we'll go back to the Roadhouse,' he says. 'Might as well give Jordy a few more lessons while we look for another job. Maybe Ash can point us to another gig.'

'Right,' says Sam, but it's the quiet tone that always means trouble.

'What do you mean, "right"? You got somewhere better to go?'

Sam sighs. 'I don't know, Dean. Just... you really want to go back there? You want to be the people we are when we're there?'

Dean has no fucking idea what Sam's trying to get at, but he's not about to let his brother have some major freakout right under the noses of Jo and Ellen, not to mention whoever else might have turned up at the Roadhouse by now.

'OK, so we won't go to the Roadhouse. You want to just drive, maybe head for Dakota and check out those rumours about a poltergeist on the reserve?'

He takes Sam's silence for acquiescence, so he heads for I-74. They both know the poltergeist rumour's a bust, but it gives them a good long journey in which to get the fuck to the bottom of this thing. He tries a few times to get Sam to talk about it, but his brother just says 'Not now, Dean,' and lapses back into silence.

Sam silent always means way more bad news than Sam arguing. Dean forgets about being hungry and keeps driving until it gets dark. Then he pulls over at the first shitty motel they see, where the check-in clerk gives them a twin room without asking. They eat supper in silence, hunched over a grimy diner table.

* * *

Dean expects to spend the evening prodding Sam into talking, because once he goes into this kind of a silence it usually takes something big to get him talking again. It's the kind of quiet he carried around in the weeks after Jess died, and again after the Demon took Dad, and somehow Dean's let him get hurt this bad without even noticing.

'What did you mean about the people we are at the Roadhouse?' he asks, and to his surprise Sam sits down on the bed and starts talking right away.

'You know, Dean,' he says, his face bleak in the harsh motel light. 'The Winchester boys, hunters born and bred, stepping up to train the next generation.'

Now Dean kind of knows where his brother's coming from, because it's true that being at the Roadhouse forces them back into the roles they try to shuck off the rest of the time. It's been a long time since they announced themselves as brothers in a new town.

Except it's always been Dean who was bothered about that aspect of going to the Roadhouse, Dean who's kept them away, so why is Sam so worried about it now?

'Is that what you want, Dean?' Sam asks, his voice flat and expressionless. 'I saw the way you were with Jordy... you were really good. There's always been a place for you there if you wanted it, you know that.'

Dean doesn't know what to say. It's true that he enjoyed training Jordy, and maybe Sam wasn't so happy about the idea of forcing a little kid into the kind of life that they've lived, but he can't see why that should provoke something as big as this.

Except he's the one who brought Sam back into this life, and kept him there too, after they'd defeated the Demon and they could have both called it a day. Maybe Sam's just tired of living from hand to mouth in rundown motel rooms, maybe he thinks they've both risked enough.

'Is it what _you_ want, Sam?' he asks. 'We don't... you don't have to keep on doing this, not if you don't want to.'

Sam gives him a stricken look and his voice cracks. 'I want - You... with Paige... that's what I'm keeping you away from.'

Dean's confused, unable to take in anything beyond the fact he's hurt Sam somehow. He aches to reach over and touch Sam, but he's frozen in place by the sound of his brother's voice, grinding out the words like they burn him.

'And... and you don't look at me anymore, Dean. You look everywhere _but_ at me. You've barely touched me since I got this.' Sam touches one hand to the scar marring his face.

For a minute Dean's still too poleaxed to respond, still wondering dumbly what the hell Paige has to do with any of this. Then he thinks of Sam's face in the hospital when Paige put Dean's hand to her stomach, hurt and hungry both at once, and it hits him all of a sudden what his brother's trying to say. It's so completely, stupidly wrong that he wants to laugh, because it's like a weight coming off his shoulders.

'I don't want to keep you tied to a fucked-up mess like me,' Sam says. 'Not if you don't want me anymore.'

Dean takes his brother's chin in his hand and tilts his head up until Sam's looking him full in the face.

'Sam, I want you.' Dean's chest feels as tight as when Resch was attacking him, because he doesn't know how he's going to make these words sound as true and real as they are.

'I thought you didn't want me to look at you, at your scar. I thought you were the one who'd had enough.' Dean swallows hard, trying to keep his voice steady. 'How could I blame you when I'm the one who nearly got you killed?'

His brother looks at him incredulously. 'Nearly got me - Dean, you're the only reason I got out of there alive. Fuck, tell me you haven't been walking around convinced that I didn't love you anymore just because of one unlucky day.'

They rarely use that word - love - even though it's true, and suddenly Dean's struck with the ridiculousness of the whole situation, him clasping Sam's face like the hero of some cheesy movie while they both wind themselves up in knots.

'Well, duh,' he says. 'You're the one who's evidently spent the last week thinking I was about to trade you in for a white picket fence.'

Sam's face blossoms into a smile, a real, complete Sammy smile that makes the scar almost invisible to Dean. He pulls Dean down onto the bed and they're suddenly tangled together, laughing and crying and mouths mashing together, because they haven't got the white picket fence or the wife and babies, or any of the happy, normal scenes they see driving through suburban streets, but anyone who thinks that leaves them with nothing's a fool.

And Dean Winchester's no fool.

Sam's mouth is wet and warm, salty with tears and clumsy as he kisses Dean through their laughter. They're in an awkward position, Sammy splayed backward where he's pulled Dean down on top of him, and it should be uncomfortable but they're too busy kissing to care, weeks of worry and frustration crashing down on them. Dean kisses the side of Sam's face, lips gentle over the scar, and Sam moans and shifts up against him.

Dean's suddenly, achingly hard. He pushes back against Sam, two layers of denim seeming like the insane invention of a psychopath, and threads his fingers though his brother's hair.

Sam moans again, and then he's twisting and rolling Dean onto the bed, hands scrabbling at the fabric of his shirt. Dean releases his mouth long enough to get the shirt up over his head, and then _ohsweetgodinheaven_, Sam's licking down his ribcage. There's just enough time for him to wonder how the hell he'd managed to live without this for so long, and then Sam's mouth closes around his nipple, sucking and nipping until he's teased it hard, and there's no more room in Dean's head for any coherent thoughts. He could soak up this feeling for hours, except after days and weeks of sleeping curled round Sam's back, of looking away so he wouldn't be tempted to push Sammy into something he didn't want anymore, he needs to see his brother.

He pulls away from Sam and pushes himself up enough that he can strip the layers of clothing from his brother's body, and _jesus_ Sammy's beautiful, all long lines and smooth skin. Dean takes a long look, drinking him in, and then he bends to kiss Sam's stomach where the line of hair tapers down below his waistband. The tip of Sam's cock pushes up from the baggy jeans, and Dean hovers over it, breathing hotly until Sam whimpers _pleaseplease_ and reaches down to grab his head, push-pulling at his hair.

Sam's cock is hot and solid and good in Dean's mouth, Sam's hips bucking up as Dean sucks and laps at the head, sliding his brother's jeans down so he can cup his balls, soft skin and surprising weight in the palm of his hand. Dean slides his fingers into his mouth, tangling fingers and cock and tongue, then trails them slickly down to press into Sam. He pushes in - _slickhottight_ \- until Sam's twisting and crying out, cock pulsing in Dean's mouth. Then Dean feels Sam's hands pushing his head away, and for a panicked second he thinks that Sam doesn't want this after all, until Sam gasps out 'Not like this... I want to fuck' and _ohyes_ Dean can more than live with that.

He strips off his own pants in three seconds flat and scrabbles in his bag for condoms and lube. Sam curls one hand around Dean's cock and reaches for the rubbers, but over the _whitehotohfuck_ Dean manages to breathe '_No_' and slide back down to suck his brother's cock in once more, a long hard suck, before rolling a condom over it. He pushes Sam back on the bed and takes a long look before slicking up his hand and rubbing one finger against his own ass.

Sam's eyes grow wide and liquid and he whispers 'Fuck, Dean, yes', trembling as he watches Dean fuck himself open on his own fingers, sliding and stretching until he's ready to slide down and grab Sam's cock, push down onto him. Dean's still tight, _fuckslowscrapeburn_, because it's been a _long_ time since they've done this, but it feels good, full and perfect and _ohshityes_ stars behind his eyes when he eases down and Sam arches his back to hit that spot.

Dean starts to move in earnest now, holding himself over Sam and twisting and bucking his hips. No matter how many years go by, it still feels like a miracle that Sam will let him do this, that they can possess each other this way. Sam reaches up to take hold of Dean's cock, rubbing and stroking, sliding his thumb over the head so Dean twists and moans and fucks himself deeper. He sinks down onto Sam, kissing him frantically while Sam moans into his mouth and shudders against him.

'Love you, Sam,' Dean mutters against Sam's skin. 'So fucking beautiful, love you stretched out like this, fucking me, how could you think I didn't want you?'

Sam cries out and slams his head back against the bed, neck arched impossibly high.

'Dean, Dean, Dean, oh god, stay with me, Dean,' he whimpers, and tightens his hand around Dean's cock. All the pent-up feelings of the months before crash over Dean, and he lets out a strangled cry. Then he's coming, hot, wet splashes over Sam's hand and belly, muscles clenching tight around Sam's cock in his ass.

They still for one moment, then Sam arches and pulls Dean down onto him, pushing up once, twice, before he's pulsing hot and urgent into Dean, crying out in release.

They lie tangled together for a long time, breathing in unison. Dean presses his face to Sam's neck, feeling the slow, steady pulse there, and thinks that he doesn't care if they're not the kind of family that features in magazines.


End file.
